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Announcing

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

So, you want to build an online learn by doing course; now you can; our new GBS tool is free; build away

The world of teaching and learning has changed, but as the
saying goes “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

The media are full of stories about companies that are putting
courses on line for universities which means that they are basically putting
lectures on line. If you want to put your lectures on line and deliver them to
large numbers of students, read no further as I have nothing to say about that
(except to say that good lectures are typically just good entertainment, no one
retains much from them. If you don’t believe me try re-telling a lecture you
heard in college.)

What will change everything is something we call the GBS tool,
the details of which will be explained later. The GBS tool enables anyone to
build an online course that will teach a student to do something. What I mean
by this is that the courses built using the GBS tool are not intended to convey
information. The telling of information and testing to see if the student
retained that information for a short period is an education model that has
seen its day.

What will replace it?

When you learned to ride a bicycle, some older person held on to
you when you started, guided you, gave you tips and eventually let you go on
your own. This model of learning, guided practice, has been with us for a very
long time. The “you listen while I tell you the latest theory and you take
notes and then there will be test” model has been around for much less time.
That model will go away when institutions that offer up the alternative model
can find a way to exist financially. Right now lectures are money makers. (1000
students, one lecturer -- universities can do the math.)

The GBS tool allows anyone who wants to, build an online
learning by doing course that includes guided practice and help from human
mentors. In other words, the GBS tool lets you do on line what everyone does
naturally with their own kids prior to sending them off to school.

Who is the GBS tool for?

There are many potential users of the tool.

1.Professors, who know full well that students
learn by doing and who would like to help students in their institution or
possibly anywhere in the world, learn to do what the professor has expertise in
doing.

2.Teachers, who, although they may not have a lot
of extra time on their hands, really have something they would like to kids to
be able do, that they like to teach how to do, and would like to make their
expertise available outside of school, inside of school, or wherever that skill
might be sought after.

3.Business experts, who would like to train employees or
the general public to do something but are hampered by their training
departments who want to do things the way they have always been done.

4.Government employees, military officers, EPA
officers, Parks department people, whomever, who’d like to train their people
better but don’t have the budget to do it right and don’t know how to get
started.

5.Regular folks, who simply have something they would
like to teach people how to do.

So how can you do this? First the good news. It doesn’t cost
anything. How is that possible? We
have built this tool in order to change how people think about teaching. The
tool is easy to use and will produce a high quality learn by doing course on
line, if and only if, the person using the tool knows how to teach somebody how
to do something that can be taught on line. (It would help if a user had read
Teaching Minds first however so they don’t try to teach the same old stuff in the
same old way with the tool.

How can the GBS tool be free? Let’s look at the five categories
of users again.

Professors. You can have the GBS tool and use it inside your
university. No cost. If you need help from us in the form of advice, we would
charge you for our time. (We are a consulting company after all.)

Teachers. The same as professors. Use the GBS tool for your
students and its free.

Business experts. Nah. Not necessarily free. If you are teaching
people in your company or other companies we offer only to drive down radically
the cost of production of training. We will provide consulting (for a
fee.)If you sell what you built
we will want a piece. If, on the other hand you want to give away your expertise
to people outside of your company and you don’t charge them for it, then we
expect nothing in return.

Courses can be any length, an hour, a year, it makes no
difference. The GBS tool has within it advice from experts (in the form of
short videos) who have been building GBSs for years. I am in there too.

Designing a good GBS is not easy. We have a range of services (course
design consulting, fiction writing, video production, expert interviewing, art,
and course review and editing, hosting) that we can provide (for a fee.)

GBS stands for Goal Based Scenario. It is an idea we have been
writing about and doing for more than 20 years. To learn more about GBSs click on
one or more of these.